Various industries must comply with a multitude of federal, state, and local laws and regulations. The case of an insurance industry may be illustrative. Each insurer must comply with various federal regulations. An insurer must hold a certificate of authority in the state it operates. Furthermore, an agent of the insurer must be licensed with the state and appointed with the company. Each state may have different requirements regarding disclosure of information to customers, the amount of liquidity an insurer must maintain, and other regulations regarding the actions of the insurer. Further, different products may have different requirements under various regulations. Therefore, insurers who offer products in a plurality of states may suffer from the difficulty and expense of ensuring compliance to a number of different regulations.
Additionally, different regulations may raise the same or similar issues for an insurer. In the example of the insurance industry, different federal, state, and local laws, regulations and self-regulatory organizations may raise the same or similar issues. By way of example, different insurance products (e.g., life insurance, health insurance, etc.) may be governed by different regulations, but may raise the same regulatory issues. A regulated business, however, may suffer from the drawback of being unable to identify similar issues for different products, or similar issues raised in subsidiary or related corporations. A business may then duplicate efforts to address issues, thereby potentially wasting time and resources. Although an insurance industry is provided as an example, the same may be applied to other financial services industries and other regulated businesses.
After identifying an issue, a regulated business may form an action plan to ensure compliance with the regulations. However, such action plans may be difficult to track and determine if the business is complying with the laws and regulations.
These and other drawbacks exist.